As Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival draws to a close, we are delighted to keep the Festival spirit going online! Below you'll find a link to our first clip from the current season, as well as two of the last outstanding excerpts from the 2010 season and a noteworthy classic from 15 years ago.
Also new this month is a feature at the bottom of this message, linking to some of the additions from recent issues of Virtual Pillow Views which you may have missed. We hope you'll check it all out, and stay tuned for more video treasures in the months ahead.
Norton Owen
Director of Preservation
Bessie - Reviving Historic Footage The Virtual Pillow team is currently preparing some rare archival footage of seminal composition teacher Bessie Schönberg speaking to Jacob's Pillow students on "How to Look at Dance". An essential but often unseen part of the media production process is the careful digitization of archival footage, in this case a VHS recording from 1986. The before and after images you see here illustrate the dramatic improvements after the Virtual Pillow team has digitized, cropped and applied multiple filters; restoring Bessie's image to a closer approximation of the vibrant person she truly was. Stay tuned for next month's release of this video within Virtual Pillow.
Crystal Pite's Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM
Crystal Pite was named as the recipient of the fifth annual Jacob's Pillow Dance Award this year, and the performances by her company, Kidd Pivot, remain a season highlight for many.In our first excerpt from the current season, we're delighted to share this riveting glimpse at Pite's Dark Matters.One notable aspect of this full-evening work is the music by Eric Whitacre, widely known for his Virtual Choir project.Also be sure to check out the short video we created to salute Crystal Pite at the season opening Gala.
Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal
The Pillow debut of Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal in 2010 was a homecoming of sorts.Company director Louis Robitaille had danced here with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in the 1990s, and one of the company founders performed in Les Grands' 1959 U.S. debut at the Pillow.In spite of these historical ties, the repertory was very much au courant, with two works by the half-Colombian half-Belgian Annabelle Lopez Ochoa.Ochoa originally created Locked Up Laura for Les Ballet Jazz, then revised the work for a Ballet Hispanico 2009 premiere.
Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble
We reach back a bit farther into the Pillow Archives for this rare bit of Katherine Dunham's repertory.It's a clip from Barrelhouse Blues, which was one of the first of what Dunham called her Americana works.Performed by Denver's Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble in 1996, this piece is based on the Shimmy from the Florida Gulf Coast, featuring Cleo Parker Robinson herself as "a beat old woman who goes to a dance to recapture a moment of her lost youth."This dance excerpt has been posted to augment a PillowTalk of Dunham speaking about performing in segregated theaters in the 1940s.
Yin Mei Dance
Yin Mei's presentation of City of Paper in 2010 marked her third engagement at Jacob's Pillow, but this is her first entry in Dance Interactive.An interdisciplinary exploration of the stories and lives lived during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, City of Paper is a challenging work to capture on video.Projected images and animations were used extensively throughout the dance, creating an environment that can only be hinted at in this excerpt from a visually stunning presentation.
In Case You Missed It... (Links from Recent Virtual Pillow Views)
